


We Followed a Feeling

by ReminiscentLullaby



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, Awkwardness, F/M, First Kiss, Happy Ending, Making Out, Regret, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:41:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27679549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReminiscentLullaby/pseuds/ReminiscentLullaby
Summary: There was something in the air tonight.Something about them had changed.Now they're prone to thoughts and words andactionsthey'd have never considered before he came knocking at her door.
Relationships: Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth/Nathalie Sancoeur
Comments: 30
Kudos: 118
Collections: GabeNath Book Club and Art Club Server





	1. Nathalie

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like it took me way too long to do this.

Her hand is on his shoulder. She'd placed it there a moment ago for some comforting purpose, the way she has done so many times before without consequence. She knows herself, and she knows she'd never dare to do such a thing if her touch didn't have the capacity to draw some of his strife away, or to soothe it like medicine, or to numb it like ice. She has never had a different intention than that.

But there is something in the air now, something she cannot name, and because it can't be named, it can't be abated. So, slowly, too slowly not to notice, her hand travels. It drifts down to his chest. Her fingertips trace their way across his collarbone, which she can plainly feel under the thin fabric of his t-shirt. He'd come to her that night dressed for bed, with a last minute thought on his mind he felt the need to share, and somehow they'd ended up here one hour later, carried away by conversation, their bare feet pressed into the carpet as they sat on the edge of the bed, speaking low. All at once, Nathalie forgets what they spoke about, whether it was work or magic or pain or all of it or none, because she hadn't realized, until this very moment, how close they were.

She usually has the sense to keep herself from even thinking about this. She knows better, she knows the cold sting of reality, and for months she has tried to help it heal. But now, her palm is sitting above his heart, and she can feel it beating. She can feel it beating _swiftly_ , and it makes her own beat faster in turn. She is too focused on the placement of her hand to know the look on his face, but she hears him inhale briskly as if he has noticed what she has noticed, and then –

And then he leans down. Nathalie hardly has the chance to react before he has cupped her jaw and lifted her head higher, so at the last second she can watch his gray eyes press closed, his mouth descend to meet her own.

It's madness, how quickly, how instinctually, she returns the kiss. Nathalie kisses him like she has kissed him a thousand times before and will kiss him a thousand times again. She kisses him like his lips belong just as much to her as they belong to him. The hand on his heartbeat joins the other to hold his face between them, as if she is trying to draw him closer, closer. He cannot be close enough. Gabriel must think the same because he takes her by the waist and pulls her against him. Everything about him is warm and solid and she never wants to let go.

Madness, utter madness.

Nathalie sighs as he deepens the kiss. She can see every inch of him, even with her eyes closed, the visible and invisible things, things he's shown her and things he has tried to keep hidden. It all appears at once in the darkness behind her eyelids. Nothing but Gabriel and everything he holds close enough to be a part of him. She already knows more than she's ever believed she could, so much that they feel all too close to being one.

It feels so good. It feels _too_ good. She wants him everywhere when she shouldn't have him at all.

It's a thought that lights up at the front of her mind in blinding colors.

And as fiercely as she'd yielded to desire, Nathalie resists again. She stops. Cold.

"Gabriel."

He opens his eyes.

"What are we…?"

A glowing gaze darts between her lips and her eyes. His expression wavers as if he doesn't understand, as if he's coming out of a trance.

They are still so unbearably close. If Nathalie doesn't want to crash back into him again, she has to move. Slowly, she slips back. She'd practically been sitting on his thigh. She takes her hands off his face, and it's only when all contact has been severed that it seems to click in his brain.

"Nathalie –!"

There's a wreck of thought that spirals across his countenance. Nathalie can't count the emotions she sees before he springs to his feet like the bed is on fire.

"I'm so sorry, I…"

She tears her eyes away from him and faces the wall. Anything is easier to look at right now than he is. Unable to bring her voice far above a whisper, she stammers, "No, it – we both – we shouldn't have – it was a mistake."

"A mistake…" he repeats, expression going rigid.

"I don't know what got into me." A pathetic lie. Nathalie can name exactly the force. She's utilized it so much better up until now, to do things that have actually helped him, to carry him gradually closer to what she knows he truly wants more than anything in the world. More than her. So much more than her, in fact, that it makes her actions a moment ago all the more wretched and worthless. She sinks her teeth into her lip and turns even further away from him, fixing her pillows which don't need fixing.

He stands there for several seconds longer, and his silence is crushing.

"You should probably…" Nathalie can't finish her sentence. Her voice breaks, and the word dies on the tip of her tongue, _Go_. She doesn't want him to go. She's never even admitted it to herself before, but every time he leaves her it hurts. It's a dull and widespread pang blooming out from her chest and rippling across her entire body. It makes her go stiff. Her fingers clench the pillow, and she pleads herself not to cry while he is still in the room.

Another moment passes. Her frantic pulse and his burning stare are the only things she can feel, until at long last his voice thickly rasps a frigid, "Good night, Nathalie."

She does not say it back. She listens to the soft footsteps carrying him out of the room. The door whines shut, and the moment the handle clicks, Nathalie feels a tear slip from her waterline to streak coolly down her cheek and drop like a bead of blood or paint or something else that stains onto the crisp white stripe of her pillowcase. She fears she has tainted everything she has worked so hard to keep pure, her intention just to be there, to do right by him, to do everything in her power to make him happy the only way she knows he can be. She's crossed a line slashed into stone, a line that couldn't be erased, and now she feels it scored into her own heart.

She's so _stupid_.

With a shudder, Nathalie lays down, curling in on herself. She wants nothing more than for all of this to have been some dreadful, incredible dream. The pieces are already so mismatched, and it feels like a false memory when she pictures him closing the gap between them, being the first to press his lips against her own. She thinks her head must be lying to her. And if it isn't, then she must have done _something_ to cause this. Something to get into his mind and do what Gabriel Agreste could never, in all his life, think to do.

" _I came in here for a reason_."

Suddenly, in the cold chill of aftermath, Nathalie starts to remember what she'd forgotten in the moments before their mistake, the exchange that had taken place in practically whispering voices.

" _I came in here for a reason_."

He'd waited over an hour to say it. She thought he'd shown up to mention a detail of his earlier conversation with Madame Tsurugi, that they'd merely gotten carried away on the waves of other topics that meant nothing at all, but here he was telling her he hadn't even breached the reason for knocking on her door that night.

She'd looked at him expectantly.

" _I needed to tell you I'm concerned_."

" _Concerned?_ "

" _About you_."

Nathalie tilted her head. They've had these conversations before, all while she's been recovering, where he's asked for reassurance that she is feeling better, getting enough rest and food and water. She expected he'd ask her to tell him again, but instead he said:

" _I'm concerned that I haven't been honest enough with you_."

" _What do you mean?_ "

" _I don't know. There's this…impression that's been weighing on me. I feel like you don't – understand. I feel like I don't understand_ –"

" _Gabriel_ ," she'd interrupted. " _Slow down. Is something wrong?_ "

Now. Now she'd put her hand on his shoulder, thumb at the end of his collar bone.

" _I can't put it into words_ ," he told her, " _But I know I_ –" She remembers his gaze had been on the wall, and here, he looked to her, his words cutting off on their own. He looked perturbed, like he intended to shrink away from her, but he stayed perfectly still. " _I'm sorry I'm not making sense_."

" _No, it's fine_ ," she said, holding his gaze, searching for clarity within it. " _We can talk it out. That's what I'm here for_."

In her head, she sees him smile, but now she isn't sure if he did. What she knows is that he whispered, " _I'm lucky to have you_."

And every so slightly, he'd moved closer.

From then on it dissolves.

Nathalie is left in the bed, staring into the space where all of this had appeared. She doesn't realize how tight her jaw is until she releases it along with a quivering sigh. As the breath passes out of her mouth, she can feel the pressure of his lips lingering.

There's a dangerous thought on her mind – dangerous because it could be true – that maybe, despite everything she has drilled herself to believe, Gabriel's feelings for her have changed.

" _A mistake…_ "

That look on his face, the way all his features set, forcing impassivity…

In a panic, Nathalie sits upright and switches off the light to let the blackness of night flood in. For the first time, she has seen a glimmer of hope, and she knows it will blind her if she lets it.


	2. Gabriel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to write more :P

Once he slams the door behind him, he feels like he can breathe again.

He left a window open in his bedroom a little over an hour ago. The night air is cool and soothes the flustered heat in his face, but Gabriel pauses as soon as it hits him. He'd have preferred not to notice there was anything wrong to begin with. Instead, sensing the way relief ripples gently through him, he becomes aware of the emotions that had gripped him before, the emotions he shouldn't have been feeling at all, the emotions that, after their brief departure at the change of environment, are beginning to sink in once more now that he has spent a second dwelling on them.

Immediately, Gabriel stalks to the bathroom to splash his face with several palmfuls of water. He scrubs at his cheeks, his eyelids, his mouth, and it feels like he is trying to grind something away, an extra layer of himself that shouldn't be there, or the touch of another still idling on his skin. Like plaster, it sits thick and rough and heavy. Like ink, he fears it won't be erased so easily. Gabriel shuts off the faucet after a few minutes and stands there, letting water droplets slide off his nose and jawline as he tries to compose himself.

He can hear Nathalie's voice in his head.

_"It was a mistake."_

Like her hands on his face and her lips against his own, those words remain with him, and he doesn't understand why. But more than he is confused by their persistence, he is confused by the simmer of emotions tossing his insides around in response to them.

He dares to call this feeling anger.

Gaping at his reflection, Gabriel reaches for a towel hanging on the wall and starts to pat his face dry. The notion that he is angry is slowly starting to sort out the mess of sensations clambering through his body, but his mind can't make sense of it. Why should he be angry at anybody but himself? Why should _those_ words be the ones to stir the heat out of the pit of his stomach? _It was a mistake_. Nathalie was right to say that, wasn't she? To come to her so late at night, to waste an hour of her time as he worked up the courage to say something that really didn't need saying, and to lean down to – to kiss her and kiss her hungrily like she was all that could sustain him, all of that was _wrong_. He was _wrong_.

_It was a mistake._

Never mind that it felt good. Never mind that he doesn't regret it. Never mind that he wants to go back, mesh his fingers through her hair and…

Gabriel drops the towel and leaves the bathroom abruptly, swiping his hand down against the wall and smacking the light so it kills with a loud _click_.

He's humiliated. Nathalie had the decency to break away and show him exactly what he needed to see, that he's a traitor of a husband to the woman that still owns his heart. And he's a traitor of a friend. After all Nathalie has sacrificed for him and Emilie, he had the nerve to indulge himself on her good will. He should be humiliated. He should be ashamed.

And it's not because her rejection stings.

It's not because when she pulled back, it felt like she was taking his heart with her.

No, that can't be true.

_It was a mistake._

It didn't feel like one.

 _"I'm lucky to have you."_ Gabriel didn't know how exactly he'd lost all restraint – maybe he wasn't aware he had something to hold back at all – but the moment those words had left his mouth, the moment he felt Nathalie's hand slide from his shoulder to his heart, he felt something come alive inside of him. A fire in constant need of fuel to feed it, drinking in the taste of her mouth, peppermint from her toothpaste or chapstick or whatever it was, but he found it lovely and simple and perfect. Suddenly they were trying to give and to take with equal ardor; Gabriel wanted to bleed into her veins just as much as he wanted to feel the throb of her heart within his own chest; he wanted her to belong to him as much as he wished she could steal him away within herself. There was this pulsing ebb and flow between them, a push and a pull, a pattern he didn't want to break. Gabriel drew her closer. She took his face in her hands. It was everything and not enough at the same time. He was full and ever-growing with his need for her.

But then she stopped. She whispered his name.

When he looked, he recognized that she was still far enough away to see with his eyes. Not close enough to envelop him. Not close enough to meld into his soul.

He didn't even register that there was something wrong with this, something other than the fact that it was over.

After shutting the window and silencing the sound of wind in his ears, Gabriel trudges to bed and peels back the covers. He doesn't imagine that he'll get any sleep tonight, haunted by his actions and by Nathalie's words.

_It was a mistake._

People make mistakes when they're lonely, don't they? Well, he's made a mistake he wants to make over and over again. He's made a mistake that he wishes had been worse. He's made a mistake he prefers to have ended with the space in his heart and his bed filled.

He must be very, very lonely.

Gabriel pulls the sheets up to his shoulders and gazes at the ceiling. A rough, trembling deep breath passes out of his nose like a gasp of pain because he knows Emilie deserves better. Nathalie deserves better. Everyone tangled up with his grief and longing and anguish deserves better than he can give them. He wanted Nathalie to know how deeply he appreciates her devotion. How dearly he values her selfless courage and resilience. He needed her to know, but he tried to tell her in a language they aren't meant to share, and all she learned was how little of her loyalty he is worthy of.

He doesn't know if there was a way he could have said it that would have made things right, because the longer he lays there, awash with the current of emotion surging around him, the more he begins to wonder if his feelings for her run even deeper than his lust had been trying to lead him, if they are bigger than the word appreciation can encompass.

There is a reason he couldn't put it into words, and there is a reason he found it easier to tell her through a kiss instead.

_"I haven't been honest enough with you."_

Nor with himself. It's effortless to disappear into a kiss. Guided by instinct alone, Gabriel sank deeper and deeper into the moment to avoid the shock of the words on his tongue, for if they hit open air, it becomes clear, _they_ are no mistake.

He doesn't know if it would have been better for him to say them instead, or if it would have really made no difference at all. Whichever way the truth surfaces, perhaps there is no honorable way to embrace it. Nathalie would know that better than him.

He pictures what the look on her face would have been, if instead of leaning down to meet her lips, he took her by the hand, the one pressed against his thumping heart and squeezed her fingers, searching the deep blue of her wide-open eyes. Gabriel reaches out and closes his fist around the empty air before him, imagining the texture of her skin. It's a hand he's held a hundred times before; he tightens his grip as if to ask if she is still awake whenever she is feeling sick; he runs his thumb across her knuckles while they speak in hushed tones; he dismisses the thought, more than once, to bring it to his lips for a parting kiss when he is about to let go…

But her face – if he grabbed her hand and held her gaze and whispered the words in his head, how would she stare back at him?

If he'd told her, "I think I'm falling in love with you," would that flash of shame have blazed across her troubled countenance the same way it had when she pulled away from him?

Gabriel can't stop his head from forming that image and more. He sees Nathalie push herself further away from him. He feels the cold on his skin left in the absence of her touch. He hears her calling him distracted and confused and urging him to be reminded of what this has all been for.

It's an accident that they've gotten closer. They are lonely and careless and that's how disasters happen.

 _"I_ know _I'm falling in love with you."_

Gabriel can't think any further than this, over and over again, this statement at the end of the chain of guilty expressions and words of dismissal, this definitive truth making his heart scream.

" _Nathalie, I'm in love with you_."

He's never known something to feel so right but hurt this much.

Gabriel inhales sharply as he reaches to switch off the light and sink into sleepless blackness. He has no idea if it would make a difference for Nathalie to know the truth, but as much as his mind tells him he is doomed to disappointment, all night long his heart races with the hope that it will find some relief from this pain. It races with the hope that he'll find her on the other side of it all, to give him strength the same way she always does.


	3. Nathalie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while, but I wanted to write a Part 3. ;)
> 
> Oh, also, if anyone's interested, the song "Wild Roses" by Of Monsters and Men served as a little inspiration. 
> 
> Enjoy this conclusion!

She gets out of bed early because it’s no use trying to sleep. Every time she gets close, her head runs wild with the memory of his touch, sending off alarms bright enough to propel her nearly upright seething with frustration. An obscene amount of caffeine seems to be her only option at this point if she’s to function through the day. At 4:45 she’s in the shower, at 5 she’s dressed and blow-drying her hair, grimacing at herself in the mirror, at 5:15 she’s carrying the first of multiple mugs of coffee to the atelier, and that the sun has an hour before bleeding into the horizon only makes her feel a little out of her mind. Frankly, any less than this would probably drive her crazy. As long as she has a job to bury herself under for the next several hours, maybe she can work last night’s mistake into oblivion. 

Perhaps, she is relying a little too much on the hope that the moment was just the amount of awkward necessary that nobody involved would have any interest in bringing it up; although, she figures if she is this desperate to forget, Gabriel must be all the more. Nonetheless, she has to restart her review of a meeting transcript about four times before she can make it even halfway without her focus spinning out from under her, taken by worries that the first thing he’ll say to her when he walks through the door eventually will be, “We need to talk.” 

_ We need to talk _ . 

Those dreadful words. They’ve been much less sinister in the past, when he has tagged on a clear “--about our strategy” at the end of the sentence, detecting a wrinkle in a plan, or a new thought occurring to him. Nathalie has never been intimidated by “We need to talk” before this morning; it has never meant to her what she knows it means to anyone with a less-than-straightforward relationship with another person. It  _ shouldn’t _ mean anything to her. Yet here she sits, leg already pumping with the misplaced energy administered by the coffee as if she doesn’t tell herself repeatedly that Gabriel surely has nothing to say. Not to her. Why should he have anything to say to her? 

When he does walk in, two minutes after seven, he blinks in surprise to see her at her desk, and his first words to her are not, “We need to talk,” but simply, “You’re awake.” 

Considering he is usually the first one out of bed in the morning, especially since Nathalie has been ill, she supposes this isn’t a reaction worth dwelling on, that the way his stare is prolonged and flickering with what could be anxiety (she doesn’t want to distinguish it) should be tossed entirely out of her mind. She aims her gaze at her computer screen, reaching for what is now her fourth mug of coffee gone cold. “Trouble sleeping – as usual,” she adds. 

“How long have you–?”

“A couple hours.”

“I couldn’t sleep either,” he says, and Nathalie’s gaze flicks up. He still stands only a few paces from the door. It makes her nervous that he hasn’t moved, that there is no apparent intention to throw himself into his work the way she’s always known him to do – the way she did today to survive the dread weighing in the pit of her stomach. 

She takes a sip of her room temperature coffee and grimaces, offering no reply. 

It perturbs him that she does not prompt further conversation, judging by the way he shifts his feet. Then, “Nathalie.” 

“Yes, Sir?” 

“I spent the night thinking.” 

She raises an eyebrow, hoping to appear unimpressed. “Generally that’s the case when one can’t sleep.” 

Gabriel makes a strange noise, something halfway between a humorless chuckle and scoff. “Nathalie, I wanted to say–” He steps towards her, only by a couple paces, but it’s enough to make Nathalie’s heart lurch “–I apologize. For what happened last night.”

Heat rises to Nathalie’s face. “Oh, you know, Sir, maybe we can just…” She sets the mug down on her desk with enough force to send a loud  _ crack _ through the air, which makes him flinch. “Leave it? I’d rather – you know, I think it’d be best if we–”

He holds up his hand to stop her. Over the course of her undignified stammering, the timidity had totally seeped from his demeanor. He stands straighter now, countenance bright and determined. “I overstepped a boundary, I realize that, and I deeply regret that I had made you uncomfortable. I hope you can forgive me for it.” He pauses and waits for a response, but Nathalie is struck dumb, not to mention kicking herself for having not anticipated he would make some kind of practical and well-worded and very nearly emotionless amends. This probably could have been over sooner if she had just urged him cut to the chase. 

Because she says nothing, he continues, “I wish I hadn’t been so forward. Admittedly, I didn’t know how to explain what I was feeling. What I did was...wrong, but it was the only way I knew how to express what I couldn’t find the words to say.” 

Nathalie sucks in her breath. “I’m sorry?” 

“I meant what I told you,” he murmurs. His voice has gone quiet. His blue-gray eyes pierce right into her. Nathalie’s stomach twists into a knot. “I  _ am _ lucky to have you, but that’s not all I wanted to say. I don’t think there was any way for me to be honest with you without crossing a line.”

“Gabriel.” Nathalie can’t believe what she is hearing – what she  _ thinks _ she is hearing. Her mouth is suddenly dry. She’s gone half numb with shock. 

And then, Gabriel closes the rest of the distance between himself and her desk. Her hand, which is shaking, goes still as he wraps her fingers in his own. Nathalie doesn’t pull away. Her mouth hangs ajar as she gazes up at him. 

“If you still believe that...that  _ kiss _ was a mistake, then I am sorry. I really am.” Gabriel takes a deep breath. A soft smile breaks across his face like dawn. “But what I felt, what drew me to you, Nathalie, was no mistake at all. It might be the first thing that’s felt right in a long time.” 

Nathalie can’t breathe. 

“Somewhere along the line,” he says, and his words are just above a whisper, “I fell in love with you.” 

There it is. Nathalie sees it in his storm-colored gaze, that same glimmer in the dark that haunted her all through the night, that dangerous hope, that tiny  _ what if _ , that distant light that could have stolen her sight and sense if she stared too long. Gleaming at her now is a certain, silvery love, clearer than she can believe. 

“Nathalie,” he gently prompts. 

But she can’t speak. She grasps for a response, but they all sail out of reach. All she can think about is last night, about their mistake. Mistake. What kind of mistake was that? The way he held her, the way he moved against her, pressed his lips to her own and made her feel more alive than any magic ever could – how could Heaven be a mistake? How could the way she felt – like she was seen and wanted and belonged somewhere – be anything but the truth? Nathalie pushes her chair back. Her hand slips out from Gabriel’s warm and perfect grip. 

“If you don’t feel the same way…” he begins as she stands up and whirls to face the window. 

“No,” she says. Her voice breaks with that word alone. Before she knows it, her eyes are wet with tears. 

“Nathalie?”

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs. “I just – I just can’t believe it. I never thought you…” She chuckles weakly, swiping the tears off her cheeks. “I never thought you’d ever feel the same way.” 

“The same way?” Gabriel comes closer, stepping around her desk. Nathalie sees him out of the corner of her eye, one hand reluctantly reaching for her arm. 

"Yes."

“Do you…?”

Nathalie turns towards him and tosses her arms around his neck. Gabriel goes rigid at first but quickly softens into her embrace, setting his chin on the top of her head. 

“Gabriel, I’ve loved you for such a long time,” she sighs. “You mean the world to me.” 

“I do?” he asks, breathless. 

“Of course, you do." Her voice is a mumble against his chest. “The world, and nothing less.”

“Oh, my dear,” he whispers. He holds her tighter. Nathalie notices only now how much his arms have come to feel like home. “I love you. More than I know how to say.” 

"That's okay." Amazed with herself, she adds, "I _know_." 

A moment later, they pull away and meet each other’s eyes. Nathalie lets him rub the rest of her tears away with his thumbs, his touch slow and delicate and sending a pleasurable chill across her skin. 

Her eyes descend to his lips. 

Time stands still. Both Nathalie and Gabriel have to know, things are still complicated. There are ridges and wrinkles and painful imperfections that have yet to be smoothed over. Promises that need to be broken. Losses that need to ache deeper and longer. Lives that are going to have to change forever. There’s a twinge in Nathalie’s heart. There’s a slump in Gabriel’s shoulders. There’s a conversation or two or many looming between them. Heartbreak and mourning and questions separating them from a happily ever after if one even exists. 

But all of that fades away. 

For now, however long now will last, there is only the two of them. There is Nathalie cupping Gabriel’s jaw and guiding his lips against hers. There is Gabriel tasting the coffee on her breath and grabbing her by the waist to pull her even closer. There is the memory of a mistake turned marvel and visions of a future long past all the pain, filled with butterflies of a different kind. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Leave a comment, if you please!


End file.
